Jobs Genius Was in His Singular Focus on a Vision

Eric Newcomer,
chief architect of the investment bank at Credit Suisse, said, "The legend
about Steve Jobs is that he -stole' the idea of the mouse and graphical
interface [i.e., Windows] for point-and-click computing from Xerox PARC. While
it's true Xerox PARC invented these things, they were developing them for a
highly technical audience, and the engineering was very expensive. Steve
adapted the ideas for the mass market in creating the original Mac in 1984,
cutting the price while improving the usability. Once he was done, the result
was very different. He understood the price points and usability thresholds of
the mass market, and had the ability to adapt highly technical concept and
designs for it. In effect, bringing the power of the computer to the masses."
Cameron Purdy,
vice president of development at Oracle, said, "Steve's genius was in his
unapologetic and singular focus on a vision that only he could realize in
advance, and which the rest of the industry would inevitably and immediately
adopt as their own-without attribution-as soon as he would unveil it. In a
world full of charlatans and snake oil salesmen, Steve was truly larger than
life, and true to his vision. His aesthetic influence has forever altered our
expectation of how technology can be shaped to serve and interact with us, in
spite of an industry that is perpetually fixated on altering our behavior to
fit with technology."

Citing Jobs'
ability to effectively channel a developer spirit and connect directly with
developers, Dion Almaer, vice president of mobile architecture at Walmart.com
and a Web development guru, pointed to his blog post around Jobs'
conversation with developers at WWDC 97.

Almaer added
that Jobs' pursuit of perfection made him work harder, by example, to deliver
better software. He said:

In life it is so easy to take the easy path," Almaer said.
"The -good enough' path. A few people strive for perfection, and he was one of
them. He wanted users to have products that they could connect with and
love...not just use. For that to happen he needed developers to be on the
journey for him. The Apple community has his spirit in that many of them truly
focus on the product. Not just the basic form and function-the full experience.
The feeling of the software. For me this even shows in APIs. I have long cared
about developer ergonomics and the feeling of giving other developers great
APIs that they will love to use. If I think of Steve I spend the extra time and
effort on those APIs. I don't take the short cuts. I care.

Theo
Schlossnagle, uber DevOps geek and CEO of OmniTI, echoed Almaer's thinking, in
that he says Jobs' example and success made Schlossnagle work extra hard to
deliver better solutions for customers.
"Steve did two
profound things for developers," Schlossnagle said. "The first is he gave us
was a development platform that we never had to think about operating. The
second was more visionary and profound. He showed us that building great
software wasn't enough; you also had to improve the lives of the user. Software
is better today because of this imbued attitude. He had much more impact
than just this, but these are the two things I will feel every day during the
rest of my career."

Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.